Polls close in Australian vote focused on high prices and shortage of housing

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Vote counting has begun in Australia’s general election after polling stations closed across the country. Counting is well underway in the east, where polls closed two hours earlier.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his rival Peter Dutton began campaigning on Saturday in the electorally crucial city of Melbourne. Albanese later returned home to Sydney and Dutton to his hometown of Brisbane to vote.

Albanese was accompanies by his fiancée, Jodie Haydon, and his adult son Nathan as he was welcomed by supporters at the polling station in his electoral division.

Dutton arrived with his wife, Kirilly Dutton, and his adult children, Rebecca, Tom and Harry, to vote in his own division.

The leaders will address party gatherings in Sydney and Brisbane later Saturday as the Australian Electoral Commission tallies votes. Leaders usually concede defeat and claim victory on the day of the election.

Energy policy and inflation have been major issues in the campaign, with both sides agreeing the country faces a cost of living crisis.

Opposition leader branded ‘DOGE-y Dutton’

Dutton's conservative Liberal Party blames government waste for fueling inflation and increasing interest rates, and has pledged to ax more than one in five public service jobs to reduce government spending.

While both say the country should reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Dutton argues that relying on more nuclear power instead of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind turbines would deliver less expensive electricity.

The ruling center-left Labor Party has branded the opposition leader "DOGE-y Dutton" and accused his party of mimicking U.S. President Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency.

Labor argues Dutton's administration would slash services to pay for its nuclear ambitions.

“We’ve seen the attempt to run American-style politics here of division and pitting Australians against each other and I think that’s not the Australian way,” Albanese said.

Albanese also noted that his government had improved relations with China, which removed a series of official and unofficial trade barriers that had cost Australian exporters 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year since Labor came to power in 2022.

Dutton wants to become the first opposition leader to oust a first-term government since 1931, when Australians were reeling from the Great Depression.

Asked if he believed his conservative coalition could win the election, Dutton told reporters in Melbourne: “Absolutely, I do.”

“I'm confident that Australians have seen through a bad government and I'm confident that Australians can't afford three more years of what they've experienced and there are a lot of families who are really doing it very tough at the moment,” Dutton told reporters after voting at a Brisbane school.

Albanese was measured about Labor's chances of securing a second three-year term.

“We take absolutely nothing for granted until the results are in,” Albanese said.

If Albanese wins, he'll become the first Australian prime minister to win successive elections in 21 years.

A cost of living crisis as the country faces generational change

The election is taking place against a backdrop of what both sides of politics describe as a cost of living crisis.

Foodbank Australia, the nation's largest food relief charity, reported 3.4 million households in the country of 27 million people experienced food insecurity last year.

That meant Australians were skipping meals, eating less or worrying about running out of food before they could afford to buy more.

The central bank reduced its benchmark cash interest rate by a quarter percentage point in February to 4.1% in an indication that the worst of the financial hardship had passed. The rate is widely expected to be cut again at the bank’s next board meeting on May 20, this time to encourage investment amid the international economic uncertainty generated by Trump’s tariff policies.

Both campaigns have focused on Australia’s changing demographics. The election is the first in Australia in which Baby Boomers, born between born between the end of World War II and 1964, are outnumbered by younger voters.

Both campaigns promised policies to help first-home buyers buy into a property market that is too expensive for many.

The election could produce a minority government

Going into the election, Labor held a narrow majority of 78 seats in the 151-seat House of Representatives, the lower chamber where parties form governments. There will be 150 seats in the next parliament due to redistributions.

Dutton’s conservative alliance of parties, known as the Liberal-National Coalition, held 53 seats in the last parliament, while a record-high 19 lawmakers were not aligned to either the government or the opposition.

Monash University political scientist Zareh Ghazarian said the major parties were gaining a smaller proportion of the votes at each election in recent decades, which was benefiting independent candidates and those representing minor parties.

If the trend of votes shifting away from major parties that was evident at the 2022 election continues at Saturday’s election, the result could be a rare minority government.

There was a minority government after the 2010 election, and the last one before that was during World War II.

“This election’s going to be a real test of whether what we saw in 2022 is a sign of things to come, or whether the ’22 election was just a one-off flash in the pan,” Ghazarian said.

The last time neither party won a majority, it took 17 days after the polls closed before key independent lawmakers announced they would support a Labor administration.